Don’t be surprised if there’s an industrial engineer at your next project planning meeting. The continuous improvement specialist—also known as Lean design expert, performance improvement coach, or process improvement consultant—is an increasingly common staff member whose purview is the big picture and whose function is to oust the sacred cows of custom and habit.
In keeping with its mission to create opportunities for low-income families in Washington, D.C., in 2012 Community of Hope (COH) embarked on its newest, largest project to date. Completed in February 2014, the Conway Health and Resource Center provides healthcare, housing, and social services to underserved populations and also serves as COH’s headquarters.
The exhibit hall at the Healthcare Design Expo & Conference (Nov. 14-17, Washington, D.C.) will be chock-full of hundreds of products from vendors, manufacturers, and service providers working in the healthcare design space, with several using the event to showcase their new offerings. Scroll through the image gallery to take a look at some of the new products that will be on display.
To see more new products from HCD Expo, click here.
Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center sought a state-of-the-art Clinical Sciences Pavilion to support its vision to be the “leader in improving child health.”
The driver for the design and functionality of the 465,000-square-foot research building, which opened in July 2015, was to enhance daylight and transparency on the wet lab floors.
For the last 14 years, I’ve had the incredible opportunity to serve as chairperson of The Center for Health Design’s board of directors, sitting with an amazing table of thought leaders who have changed the way you and I practice design and the way most Americans experience healthcare delivery.
With the Affordable Care Act in place and an economy on the rise, retail and healthcare are an inseparable pair. Healthcare organizations are ramping up to improve patient experience and population health—not only by embracing preventive care and cost-conscious measures, but also by creating retail-like healthcare environments. Today’s providers are migrating deeper than ever into communities, luring consumers with convenient care in a smaller, less-expensive outpatient footprint.
You’re a healthcare project manager responsible for constructing a new building in your system. To date, you’ve followed the strategic plan and the master plan and have developed a conceptual project budget. You’ve secured board approval, too. Now it’s time to review and make recommendations to your leadership on the project delivery approach.
Healthcare is moving away from individual encounters with single clinicians and toward coordinated, integrated care by high-performing teams. This is particularly true in the outpatient environment and for healthcare systems pursuing patient-centered medical home (PCMH) models of care.
Not only is the new 235,000-square-foot, 100-bed Northeast Georgia Medical Center (NGMC) Braselton notable for sustainability measures that have it tracking LEED Gold and a rigorous use of Lean design that’s streamlined clinical processes and operations. But what also makes the project a standout is the fact that it’s the first new hospital to be built in the Peach State in 20 years.
Designing spaces to meet the needs of baby boomers is especially challenging because there’s no clear definition of this specific patient population nor of its unique needs and desires regarding the healthcare built environment.
So it’s no wonder that there’s confusion among healthcare industry leaders on how to respond with an appropriate design for this very important inpatient and outpatient base.
Through all of this confusion, it’s important to note a new approach that can be the great equalizer: universal design.
Breakthroughs in radiation therapy—specifically, the use of heavy particles, such as protons and carbon-ions—are creating promising new possibilities for treating cancer.
